The way she keeps going when everything in her life tells her to stop. The way she drags herself up from places most people never come back from. Again and again. Like something in her refuses to give up, no matter how badly it’s been beaten down.
I’ve seen it.
All of it.
The nights where there was nothing left in her—when she sat on the floor with a bottle in her hand, crying like no one would ever hear her.
When she whispered questions into the dark, like the universe might answer if she just asked the right way.
When she turned to strangers on a screen, hoping they could teach her how to fix something that was never hers to break.
Oh, little poison.
So much pain.
And still—sowilling to believe.
My gaze drifts over her now, slow, deliberate. The rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin fabric. The soft exposure of her throat in the spill of moonlight.
Unprotected.
Mine.
My hand settles there without thought, spanning the length of it, feeling the fragile rhythm beneath my palm.
It would take so little.
Just a little more pressure.
Just a little longer.
The thought doesn’t disturb me. It steadies me.
Because it reminds me how easily I could end this—how completely she exists at my mercy.
And still, I don’t.
Because I don’t want to destroy her.
I want to keep her.
She makes that difficult sometimes.
Fighting things she doesn’t understand. Resisting in small, pointless ways.
Like it could change anything.
Questioning things that would be easier if she just accepted them.
If she just accepted me fully, I could give her everything.
Not the scraps she’s been surviving on.
Something real. Something complete.
I could take that restless, searching energy inside her and direct it somewhere it actually belongs.
To me.